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5
Geothermal Reservoir Simulation
Olaf Kolditz, Mando Guido Bl¨ ocher, Christoph Clauser, Hans-J¨ org G. Diersch,
Thomas Kohl, Michael K¨ uhn, Christopher I. McDermott, Wenqing Wang,
Norihiro Watanabe, G¨ unter Zimmermann, and Dominique Bruel

Since 1971, the hot dry rock (HDR) concept has been developed from a notion to
the point where system feasibility is under demonstration. HDR technology can be
applied in most countries and is not dependent on specific geological conditions.
During the last decade, significant progress has been made in drilling and in
borehole measurements, as well as in the understanding of the processes involved
in the creation and operation of stimulated geothermal reservoirs. The design
and creation of enhanced geothermal systems (EGSs) requires the development
of simulation models to predict the growth behavior of hydraulically induced and
active reservoirs. Geothermal reservoir simulation has been conducted at several
European research sites in the past. Figure 5.1 shows a map of site studies that are
presented in this work.
In the first part of this chapter we briefly describe the theoretical background
of geothermal reservoir simulation with emphasis on thermohydromechanical
(THM) processes. A short discussion of results from the Groß Sch¨ onebeck, Bad
Urach, Soultz, Rosemanowes, the German Continental Deep Drilling Program
(KTB) in Windischeschenbach and Stralsund case studies is given in the second
part of this chapter.

5.1
Introduction

The numerical analysis of multifield problems in porous media is an important
subject for many geoengineering tasks such as the management of georesources
(e.g., engineering of geothermal, oil, and gas reservoirs) as well as waste manage-
ment (e.g., chemotoxic and nuclear waste, CO 2 sequestration), see for example,
(Doughty and Pruess, 2004; Stephansson et al., 2004; Alonso et al., 2005). For
geothermal reservoir management, simulation tools are required that take into
account both coupled THM processes and the uncertainty of geological data, that
is, the model parametrization.

Geothermal Energy Systems. Edited by Ernst Huenges
Copyright  2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
ISBN: 978-3-527-40831-3